A/N - decided to post a day early. Hope you don't mind. ;-D

oooOOOooo

Maybe they decided he needed two days of recovery instead of just the one. Wow. He ate their bread and drank their water in brooding silence. He still couldn't stand up. He had to drag himself to the farthest corner to take care of business in a pile of straw they'd dumped sometime while he was out of it. If that was meant to be his bedding, it was just too bad. He couldn't lie on it in any case with no blanket to cover it. Straw would only exacerbate his injuries, scrape them and scratch them if not downright poke and prod. He hadn't been taken out on potty breaks like first time around. He slept under the stone bench, his 'comfy chair', on the bare floor. Occasionally, he dozed while propped up against the wall, his bare legs sticking straight out in front of him. The cold stone floor was soothing to his ass and thighs. When it grew too cold, he dragged himself out from under the bench and slept against the gate, as near that damn tantalizing brazier as he could get. As one side of him grew warm, he'd turn himself like a chunk of meat on a rotisserie grill. He cringed at the metaphor. It was way too accurate.

The goons kept the brazier going, occasionally stoking it with the pokers and grinning at him, wiggling their eyebrows. John kept his head down. He didn't want to appear too defeated, but he was exhausted. Plus his neck still twinged from one of Sora's random strikes. He tried rolling his head. It hurt, but if the welts were beginning to heal, they needed to do so with minimal scarring and maximum flexibility. He dug his heels into the stone floor and managed a few sit-ups. He eased over onto his belly, and attempted some push-ups since his toes were miraculously uninjured, for which he was grateful. It was low level exercise, but he had to take charge of his own physical therapy. He knew that might mean that they'd come for him, but he found himself antsy enough to get this crap over with. Yep, he was recovering if he was at the antsy stage. Had he been in the infirmary, he would be begging by now to be allowed a wheelchair to get around. Crutches would be out of the question.

He forced himself to flex his feet as the raw welts had calmed down, and had even stopped bleeding. He found he could twitch them, and even wriggle his toes. He could have cried with relief. He sniffed, and pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to prevent another sorry display of tears. He doubted he would be able to walk any time soon, but hey, this was a start. He decided to stay positive. He might even get to keep his commission. Maybe if he played up his injuries to these women, they would allow more and more time between his punishments. Maybe his team would find him soon. Maybe he could go home and lick his wounds, haven taken one for Atlantis.

Then they came for him. They blocked the warmth and light from the brazier, casting a Cerberus-like shadow across his prone body.

"You'll have to excuse me for not getting up, but I'm a little tied up at the moment," he quipped. Wow. He hadn't thought he'd had it in him. "So, whose turn is it to beat the crap out of me, huh?"

"Bring him."

The Wiggles hooked him up to the outside of the gate. Same old. This time, he didn't rest his feet on the crossbar. He just let himself dangle, though he considered using his toes for minimal purchase. It opened up the abrasions on his wrists, but that would happen anyway once he began to writhe in agony. At least it would save his feet from further damage. John closed his eyes, and let his head rest against a vertical bar of the gate. It soothed his forehead. For a brief moment. There was nothing he could do, and watching one of them prepare his next punishment wasn't going to help in any case. He kept his mouth tightly shut. It was then he wished he could also shut his ears. He heard the familiar crack of a whip. Sarayah? John flinched.

"You have been whipped before. I noticed the scars on your back. So, you will understand this when I tell you that this particular whip has five strips of leather."

Shiana? Shiana was going to whip him? On top of the cane welts? With some cat-o'-five-tails? Holy fuck! He was never going to come out of this alive! She had lost her husband and children. That was a minimum of three strikes. Fifteen lashes. He'd stopped bleeding, but his skin hadn't had time to heal yet and he was a mass of bruises from his neck almost to his knees.

"How many… children?"

"You have guessed the nature of your punishment correctly, John Sheppard. But why is it that only now you care to acquaint yourself with the extent of my loss? You cared little until today. Not once did you ask after them. Not! Once!" she spat.

She was right. He'd never bothered to find out. Same as he'd never bothered to follow up on Sora. He really was a piece of crap. As Shiana flitted past him, he almost wished he could block both nostrils as well as both ears. He still felt nauseous, and her heady perfume was assaulting his nose. He opened his eyes to ward off vomiting until he had a decent target, to find that Shiana had stepped inside the cell. She nodded to a Wiggle, who slammed the gate shut, this time without locking it. What was going on?

"John Sheppard, I find you complicit in the deaths of my husband and four children."

Four… John winced.

"I see you understand that you will be struck a mere five times. But not by me." Shiana edged closer to him, and looked up through squinty eyes. John's eyes were equally squinty, but that was from pain and hunger and yes, fear. John was ready to admit he was fucking scared shitless.

"John Sheppard, you now have our permission to look upon Shiana of the Tribes of Santhal." She stepped closer. "I want to watch you as you are struck, John Sheppard. I want to see pain etched in your face. I want to sear the memory of today in my mind, and recall it at will. When my pain becomes too much to bear, I want to see yours."

"Who…?"

"Why, my strongest." She proffered her slyest, slittiest-eyed smile to date.

Shiana nodded to someone behind him. John braced himself as best he could, but when the first strike landed across his abused back, he let out an involuntary scream. He was already in agony, and there were four strikes to go. The whip tore open barely healed cuts from the get-go in a span from his shoulders to his flanks, and he could feel the blood flow instantly in rivulets down his back.

" ….rogue element… "

He thrashed and jerked - he couldn't help himself! - and although he tried to control his facial expressions, he knew that to be a losing battle. He was grimacing, blinking rapidly, and he knew his lips were twitching spastically. He summoned his best defiant glare at Shiana, and was surprised to see a sleezy smile from her that included her not-so-pearly whites.

John groaned. Shiana nodded in apparent satisfaction. John lifted his chin defiantly, and braced himself. The next strike came from his other side.

"…conspiring with the Wraith… "

That was when John projectile vomited, hitting Shiana full in the face. He grinned. There was potentially no other victory left him. The woman shook with rage, wiped herself down with a handful of straw, only to find it hadn't been used as bedding but as a latrine. John managed a chortle, which morphed into a scream as the next strike landed on the back of his legs. He panted heavily. Sweat poured into his eyes, stinging them. Snot poured from his nose, and he thought he might have bitten either his tongue or his bottom lip or both. John managed one last defiant glare at the bitter woman before him before his vision blurred, and he passed out, mercifully missing out on the next two strikes.

They must've thrown another pail of freezing water over him to awaken him, to force him to feel those last strikes. He was freezing. No, he was baking. The water - sweat? - evaporated from him. He was vertical. Horizontal. He was spinning. Rotating. Gyrating. Skewered. Impaled. On that rotisserie grill.

He was floating.

John called out for Carson, begging him for painkillers. He wanted the 'good stuff' to flow through his veins. He wanted to go home. He wanted a shower. A shave. He wanted a turkey sandwich and an ice-cold Bud to wash it down with. He wanted to stop writhing in a pool of his own blood. He couldn't take any more. He wanted to die. Right now. Or ascend. He called out for Teer and Chaya to take him. He wanted his dead parents to take him.

His mother was a sweetheart and his father smelled of pipe tobaccooo...

Oh... Ohhh... Ohhh! Ohhh! Aaagh!

"Aaagh!"

He didn't want to die at Sarayah's hands. Hand. What was she planning on doing to him? She not only held a grudge against him, she totally got off on his pain. Always did. Always would. He couldn't take another whipping. Not this soon. He knew this much of old. Then he remembered the pokers in the brazier. They hadn't been used yet. He had to find a way to kill himself. But he could barely think past the agony. It was turning him inside out. He willed himself off the spit, or maybe he'd even unskewered himself, and had floated away. He couldn't be sure. Either way, he was lying on the floor of his cell. He staggered over to the stone bench, managing to bloody his feet again in the process. Still, where he was going, he wouldn't need feet any more.

John knocked himself out by smacking his forehead on the bench.

He vaguely remembered water pouring down his throat, time and time again, and he spluttered in panic. They were waterboarding him! Without even giving him a sporting chance of taking a preliminary breath? No, wait! This was drinking water. Someone was lifting his head, helping him drink, as he couldn't do it on his own. John relaxed his guard a little. Every once in a while, along came more water, and even a little broth. Both tasted funny.

His mind was fuzzy. Maybe his drinks were laced with painkiller and antibiotics. They most likely wanted him fit enough to face his third and final punishment. Bitches. He could feel something soft against his abused skin. He cracked open one eye to see he was pretty much covered from head to toe in bandages in varying states of bloodiness from pink to red to brown. These seemed to be more or less saturated from day to day. Huh. He guessed they were being changed out at intervals, though he couldn't keep track. Mercifully, his feet had been wrapped up. He was still in the cell, but he was lying on a cot, his new 'comfy chair'. A single chain led from his right ankle to the cot like a surfboard leash, Pegasus style.

They flipped him from side to side occasionally, and rested him on his front but never on his back. At least not at first. Whenever he was on his front, he allowed his tears to flow into the sheet he had been placed on. He guessed they'd given him plenty of water then. Go figure. His arms were free, and he fumbled for his tags. Still there. He was still John Sheppard. At least for a while longer. He wondered how long that would last. The last he remembered of this John Sheppard dude was that he was being destroyed piece by piece. Destroyed and rebuilt. Only to be destroyed again single-handedly by Sarayah of Medulsa in the not-too-distant future.

He was in and out of lucidity for several days. They unraveled him intermittently like some hot potato prize. Occasionally someone dabbed at his back. He hadn't the strength to swat their hands away, though in his mind he tried. He glanced bleary-eyed at the cloths they used and wrung out in some pail of water. Milky yellow with pus. No blood. He guessed his injuries were weeping then. And infected. When they quit their ministrations, he guessed his injuries were crusting over nicely. Judging by the steady depletion of bandages, and the lack of fresh blood, he was recovering. Physically, at least. They even flipped him onto his back finally. His feet no longer felt like elephantine clumps under the blanket they finally deigned to give him. He kicked the blanket away, and spied his own regular bare feet. No bandages. That was too good to be true. He raised his head, straining to see the fresh pink skin on the soles of his feet, but even that movement proved too much, and he passed out again. He heard voices, sometimes whispering as if they were being remotely considerate, but mostly they were loud, as if they didn't give a damn if they disturbed their patient or not. Why should they? He was being healed only to be punished again.

Sometimes they spoke to him, but he chose to ignore them. He would turn his head away, only to have his head yanked back and up by his hair, have more tainted broth shoved down his throat. Some of them were gentle, tender, most of them weren't. He didn't bother trying to work out who was who. It really didn't matter. He deserved poor treatment. He really was the biggest piece of crap in two galaxies.

They lifted him occasionally to take a pee or a dump, and without ever opening his eyes, he performed for them like a pre-schooler once his sorry butt hit some cold pan or Li'l Shep poked a jug. It wasn't worth shit to argue. He doubted he would ever see Atlantis again, and he resigned himself to the fact that the last thing he would most likely ever see was Sarayah's cold eyes glinting in the flames.

"John Sheppard, you now have our permission to look upon Sarayah of Medulsa."

That's where you're all wrong. It's Medusa. Medusa.

"You tried to escape, John."

Uh, no, lady. He really didn't. He'd been too caught up in struggling to die. Maybe that's what she meant. As he began to come to himself a little bit more, he realized where he was. Back on that damn gate. This time, he was facing outwards. He gamely attempted a defiant upward nod, only to find his head been secured to the gate by a brace. His arms were pulled out sideways, and a quick tug told him his wrists were still in manacles. The chains securing him were hooked over the first and last spikes. Worse still, his legs were spread apart. Oh, shit. He tried tugging his feet towards each other, and bring his knees up, both actions a vain attempt to protect Li'l Shep and the Boys. But he was still fucking shackled to the gate by his ankles.

There was also some kind of banding around his waist and chest. He couldn't glance down, but they both felt biting cold like the brace holding his head in place. So, metal then. He wasn't going anywhere. And this time, it was Sarayah's turn. She'd made sure he was more vulnerable than ever. He was facing the brazier. And those pokers. He wanted to shut his eyes, block everything out, but his gaze was drawn to the flames.

John realized he was panicking again, his chest heaving. He'd been near death for several days, but no, there was no escape. He wanted to kill Sarayah. but they would most likely see each other in Hell. With so much blood on his hands now, that was where he was headed. No question. That, or he was already there.

"Well, now. Seems you have guessed the nature of your third and final punishment at my hand, John. Yes, hand. Singular. I intend to make sure you remember what you did you me. What you took from me."

In his peripheral vision, he could see Sora and Shiana. No doubt waiting their turn for use of the communal eyeball. The Wiggles stoked the brazier as one. They still insisted on looking over at him, still wiggling their eyebrows like it wasn't getting old.

Way to be bad-ass…

The Wiggles quit their stoking, and stepped aside to allow Sarayah free passage. Sora and Shiana eyed each other, feigned a yawn each, and took their leave, flanked by the Wiggles. So, this was it. They were all abandoning him to Sarayah. It looked like none of them could stomach what she was planning to do to him. He was screwed. Bayoneted. Sarayah skittered over to him like Samara out of the TV, her long dark hair covering her face. When he saw what she was wielding in her stump, he sorely wished he could flick to a different channel.

'Poker night' was about to take on a whole new meaning.

oooOOOooo